Kurt Boone | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | September 24, 1959 |
| Other names | Kurt B Boone Messenger 841 |
| Occupation | Author |
| Years active | 1990-present |
| Website | KurtBooneBooks.com |
Kurt Boone (born September 24, 1959) is a New York City-based author known for his work documenting street culture, which includes graffiti, urban cycling, street photography, skateboarding, busking, and spoken word. [1] [2]
Boone was born in the Bedford–Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn to Elliott W. Boone Sr., a United States Postal Service employee, and Thelma Boone (née Strothers). [1] [3]
Boone graduated from Andrew Jackson High School in the Cambria Heights neighborhood of Queens in New York City. In high school, Boone was on the track team and basketball team. [2]
Boone attended LaGuardia Community College. He graduated from Los Angeles City College with a degree in business administration.
Boone started writing poetry in his first year at LaGuardia Community College. He worked as a sports reporter for York College's Pandora Box and Los Angeles City College's Los Angeles Collegian newspapers.
The first book he ever wrote was for the Yale Series of Younger Poet Contest. He did not win but the contest inspired him to write more books.
In 1990, Boone began working as a New York City foot messenger for Rapid Messenger Service. Working as a messenger, delivering and picking up packages either by foot or by bike, was a common occupation for many former high school track stars at that time. Boone is classified as a "metro" messenger, which means he delivers and picks up packages by foot using the New York City Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) service. Metro is short for MTA. Boone became known for being one of the fastest foot messengers in New York City. [4]
While working as a foot messenger and riding the subway on the jobs that are typically less than an hour, Boone writes poetry that is influenced by his travels and encounters with people. [4] [5]
Boone started to become known as a fast courier and talented poet, performing poetry at many New York City events. That eventually led him to produce his first book of poems, Looking For Myself, which was published in 1996. By that time he had left Rapid Messenger Service in 1994.
In addition in the 1990s he was a sales representative for the Quarterly Black Review of Books and later a marketing representative for the Harlem Book Fair, a division of QBR. In 2000, he again went back into messenger work, but this time he would document his experiences in books and videos.
Since 2000 in his 12 years as a messenger, he has been reported upon in the media and made the cover of Courier Magazine, with the front headline: "Nobody knows The Gritty Streets of NYC better than Kurt Boone." [6]
Feature stories about Boone have been published in The New York Times , New York Daily News , New York Post and Metro New York . Boone's writing work has also led to opportunities in film and video. He appears in Verse: A Murder Mystery (2011), Career Courier: The Labor Of Love (2011) and produced The Messenger Poet Show (2011), a web television series.
In total, Boone worked at Rapid Messenger Service, Excel Messenger Service, Kangaroo Courier and Mobile Messenger Service – all based in New York City.
Boone's four books of poetry are a loose collection that he calls his messenger poetry series, which documents stories about messengers in verse form, in poetry. [7]
Boone's 2016 book, Subway Beats: Celebrating New York City Buskers, features over 250 musicians in approximately 30 subway stations. It took him over three years to compile and complete the book, which he documented on an online blog. [8] [9]
Boone appeared in Spike Lee's 1992 film, Malcolm X.
Boone cites the author Frank McCourt and playwright Langston Hughes as influences on his work. [3]
Boone lives in the Cambria Heights neighborhood of Queens in New York City. [1] [2]
Boone is known by his foot messenger dispatch name, Messenger 841. It is also the name of an eponymous line of clothing and messenger bags, as well as a consulting company for marketing and film production. [4]
{{cite book}}: |first5= has generic name (help){{cite book}}: |first3= has generic name (help)Interview starts at 6:00
Kevin Young is an American poet and the director of the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of African American History and Culture since 2021. Author of 11 books and editor of eight others, Young previously served as Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library. A winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship as well as a finalist for the National Book Award for his 2003 collection Jelly Roll: A Blues, Young was Atticus Haygood Professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University and curator of Emory's Raymond Danowski Poetry Library. In March 2017, Young was named poetry editor of The New Yorker.
Cambria Heights is a residential neighborhood in the southeastern portion of the New York City borough of Queens. It is bounded by Springfield Boulevard and Francis Lewis Boulevard to the west, the Elmont, Nassau County border on the east, Queens Village to the north, St. Albans to the west, and Montefiore Cemetery and Laurelton, Springfield Gardens, and Rosedale to the south. As of 2010, Cambria Heights's population was 18,677. The neighborhood is part of Queens Community Board 13.
Ron Padgett is an American poet, essayist, fiction writer, translator, and a member of the New York School. Great Balls of Fire, Padgett's first full-length collection of poems, was published in 1969. He won a 2009 Shelley Memorial Award. In 2018, he won the Frost Medal from the Poetry Society of America.
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Thomas Matthew McGrath, was a celebrated American poet and screenwriter of documentary films.
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This is a bibliography of works by and about Daniel Joseph Berrigan, S.J., who was an American Jesuit priest, anti-war activist, poet, essayist, and university instructor. Berrigan was an award-winning and prolific author, who published more than 50 books during his life in 1957, he was awarded the Lamont Prize for his book of poems, Time Without Number.
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